Sell-crack-or-die defense is now 0 for 2

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Rigoberto Valle testified recently in San Francisco court that he was told that he must sell crack or face death by gun or knife. The jury didn’t buy the Honduran immigrant’s “sell crack or die” defense, convicting him. Soon he’ll be sentenced, and probably deported.

Now a jury has rejected the somewhat similar, arguably less compelling case of Jorge Jimenez. The 27-year-old former laborer from Mexico, arrested twice for dealing crack and deported at least once, was caught again in January dealing crack to an undercover SFPD officer. His defense? He had to do it, or the man who provided him with drugs might kill him.

But his defense was a little shaky, so much so that Jimenez’s lawyer, Steve Gayle, had to argue at one point that his client didn’t know what he was talking about.

First, Jimenez admitted that he had stolen drugs to use himself rather than sell them for his alleged oppressor.

Jimenez was asked on the stand if he felt he was in the midst of an emergency when he was dealing drugs, a requirement if he hoped to win acquittal based on what is known as the necessity defense.

He told the jury no. In fact, he said, after the deal with the undercover cop, his plan was to get high on crack rather than to rush back to pay the man who was supposedly controlling him.

Gayle said his client was wrong about that. “He was threatened to commit a crime on pain of being shot by a thug,” he told the jury.

Prosecutor Richard Hechler argued that the only necessity in this case was “in his own head. It was a necessity for his own high.”

“Addiction is a terrible thing, ladies and gentleman, but it does not excuse crimes,” Hechler told the jury.

The panel got the case late Thursday and convicted Jimenez Friday. He faces as much as 11 years in prison, and then he’ll probably be deported.

“San Francisco juries have heard variations on the necessity defense twice in the past month,” district attorney’s spokesman Brian Buckelew noted. “Judging from the verdicts, they don’t seem to be particularly enamored with it.”